Indian Activist Calls Off Fast but Vows to Keep Fighting

MUMBAI, India — A day after the lower house of the Indian Parliament passed an anticorruption law that the activist Anna Hazare has dismissed as weak, he called an early end on Wednesday to a three-day fast for health reasons.

Mr. Hazare’s announcement came after his doctors said that his kidneys might fail if he continued his fast, which started here on Tuesday and drew a few thousand supporters, far fewer than his previous protests in New Delhi. In a combative speech, Mr. Hazare, who appeared exhausted, said that he and his team would begin campaigning against politicians in the coalition government led by the Congress Party in coming elections in five states, calling them “traitors to the nation.”

“We know that they have a lot of money, but we also know that they cannot buy every voter,” Mr. Hazare said from the stage at a fairground in the center of a busy business district. “We will tell the voters not to vote for traitors.”

He said he would begin a new three-day fast in New Delhi on Friday, but his top aide, Arvind Kejriwal, later said that Mr. Hazare needed several days of rest.

Earlier in the day, the government put off introducing the bill to create an anticorruption agency, known as a Lokpal, in the upper house, or Rajya Sabha, until at least Thursday. On Tuesday, the lower house, or Lok Sabha, passed the bill along party lines but could not muster enough votes to enshrine the law in the Indian Constitution.

For much of the year, the government and Mr. Hazare and his team have fought over the shape of the law, which has led action to be stalled or slowed on many other matters. The debate has been fueled by widespread outrage over a series of high-profile corruption scandals involving telecom licenses, the Commonwealth Games of 2010 and real estate deals.

Mr. Hazare’s team has pushed for the creation of an independent Lokpal that would oversee the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation and have sweeping powers to prosecute corruption at all levels of the government. The government, however, has resisted those demands and pushed for a less powerful agency that would not have administrative control over the bureau of investigation.

Mr. Hazare, a portly rural activist who was once a driver in the Indian Army, won a strong following across India, especially among the middle class in large cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, after he was arrested in New Delhi in August. Public officials were quickly forced to release him and later, after he had been on a hunger strike for 13 days, promised to pass a tough law. He also fasted in April.

On Wednesday, he appeared to suggest that his struggle had to move directly into the political arena and beyond fasts, which were used to powerful effect by the Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, after whom Mr. Hazare models himself.

He said his group, India Against Corruption, would seek to influence state elections early next year and the national elections due in mid-2014. He also said that the group would indefinitely put off an effort to have more than 100,000 people court arrest and fill up the nation’s jails if Parliament did not pass a satisfactory Lokpal bill.

Vikas Bajaj reported from Mumbai, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi.

A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2011, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Indian Activist Calls Off Fast But Vows to Keep Fighting. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe